auction to be tanned domestically and sold in
those states where it is legal, mostly as boots.
I arrived at Ellis "Benck" Benckenstein's
bayou-side backyard in Calcasieu Parish just
after dark. At a picnic table beneath two
naked light bulbs, Benck was scraping away
the last remnants of flesh from a nine-foot
gator hide. When the skin was clean, he
rubbed it down with rock salt to preserve it
for the auction and rolled it up.
"We're up to our ears in gators," said
Benck's wife, Brenda, over lemonade. "Why,
they stop traffic and even crawl onto the air
port runway. We lost a dog to one, just out
back. The kids can't swim in the bayou."
Alligators nearly vanished from these
marshlands in the 1950's, when their skins
were more fashionable than blue suede shoes.
"My daddy carpeted the insides of his old
DeSoto with gator skins," said neighbor Mary
Fay LeBlanc. "That was class!"
These days in Calcasieu Parish, however,
nothing seems more prized than the succulent
white meat from the gator's tail. Alligator
flesh cannot be sold legally. But it is bartered,
and few presents are as dearly given.
What Wine Goes With Gator?
A young gator hunter, Bruce Watts, brought
some alligator he had spit-barbecued to
Benck's. It tasted like a cross between fish
and chicken. "I like gator any way," said
Bruce. "Southern-fried or alligator jambalaya,
but alligator spaghetti is hard to beat."
Most bayou gator hunters bait shark hooks
with blackbirds and leave them dangling
from bamboo poles just over the water. When
a hooked gator is found, it is hauled in and
shot. Louisiana hunters last year legally took
some 4,500 hides, fetching as much as $18 a
foot at auction.
A few hundred miles away in Florida some
8,000 alligator complaints a year plague the
Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Com
mission. Particularly in central Florida, alli
gators-usually much too small to be dan
gerous-are popping up everywhere from
laundry rooms to rose gardens, as more
and more people move into gator habitat.
Some now regard the alligators almost as
mascots. Along Lake Alice on the University
of Florida campus, students regularly toss
them cookies and marshmallows. At Lake
Mirror in downtown Lakeland, retiree Mil
lard Fallis asked game and fish commission
officer Floyd Buckhalter about Blinkie, a one
eyed alligator that has prowled that lake for
years. "Tell me if what I'm doing is wrong,"
said Fallis. "A couple of times Blinkie has
been lying on the shore here, and I've gone
down and patted him."
Not a good idea, advised Buckhalter.
"When you get people giving them names
and calling them up by beating on pans, that's
when they get dangerous. They lose their nat
ural fear of humans."
Problem Animals Now Hunted
Alligator attacks have increased markedly.
A teenage girl was killed swimming in a lake
in 1973. A wildlife biologist was mauled by a
12-footer in the Oklawaha River in 1975.
Although a swimmer in Florida is far more
likely to drown than be attacked by an alliga
tor, some big gators-eight feet and over--do
need to be dealt with.
After the animal's endangered status was
downgraded to threatened last January, the
game and fish commission began an experi
mental program, sending former alligator
hunters out to kill problem animals, then auc
tioning the hides. The first auction brought
$18.50 a foot for 592 gators. The hunters got
70 percent of the price. The commission views
this as an economical way to control both alli
gators and costs.
The state would also like to hold alligator
harvests, and recently decided to permit the
sale of farmed animals. That decision pleases
Ed Froehlich, one of several Floridians who
have been learning how to raise gators in cap
tivity on a gamble that the market would re
open. More than 2,000 gators now swish and
scramble about the ponds and tanks on Ed's
farm near West Palm Beach.
"It takes two hundred pounds of meat every
Handbags on the hoof feast at Ed and Francine Froehlich's alligator ranch near West
Palm Beach, Florida. Their 2,500 gators gobble 3,000 pounds of meat and fish weekly. Un
der ideal conditions young alligators can convert each pound of food into half a pound of
body weight. The Froehlichs hope to harvest 200 hides this year-and 1,000 by 1980.
NationalGeographic,January 1978
112